One Year New York!
06 November 2010
Being a self-portrait photographer is not easy, at all. It’s not just being always the focus of your pictures. It’s about putting yourself constantly to the test, all the time. You become your own shrink, you become an actor. You face the camera, your embarrassment and your own aesthetics every single time you’re working on a project. You are part of it in a much more intimate and introspective way, mirroring your own self in dozens and dozens of different representations.
Clare Bottomley is a self-portrait photographer. You don’t need to believe us when we say she is incredibly talented. The prize she won speaks for itself: SVA - School of Visual Arts Photoglobal Award at ITS#EIGHT. And that means: “Come to New York for one year, we invite you to attend our Photoglobal photography course because we feel you have potential”. And that’s one of the most renowned photography and visual arts school in the world saying it, based in what is probably THE capital for photography, worldwide. Clare packed her bags after ITS#EIGHT, hopped on a plane and flew to NY.
One year has passed and Clare is now back. We got in touch with her asking how the experience was and we received a beautiful long text and some wonderful pictures.
Everything Clare does exudes irony, melancholy, romanticism. Lots of life and laughter and some anger too. Moments of utter bewilderment about this crazy world, mixed with the expectation of something more. Eyes peering over the horizon waiting for someone. Heroic and legendary figures stripped of their supernatural elements and brought down to earth to mingle with us, mere mortals…
Nothing but the words of Clare can better explain what it was like being in New York and exploring photography and visual arts thanks to SVA. So, we need do nothing but leave the word to her.
First arriving in New York just two months after winning the SVA PHOTOGLOBAL residency award, my life had been a bit of a whirlwind, trying to get everything sorted. So when it came to me being let in to my dorm room after an 8 hour flight, then trying to navigate through the city with two massive suitcases filled with all of my worldly belongings, it was a very odd feeling to be left alone. My life had completely changed direction: I couldn’t help but feel anxious, thinking if I ‘had made the right decision’. However when I started to explore the city my nerves started to fade. I had been to New York before on a one week college trip, so I had a vague idea of what the pace of the city was like, and from the get go I loved it and couldn’t believe I had not moved to a big city before.
What I liked the most was strolling around the blocks, looking at the diversity of the city from Alphabet City neighborhood to the Upper Eastside, from Chelsea to China town. As I got to know the city I gravitated towards the Brooklyn night scene, one of my favorite haunts being Union Pool, which was a very fun low-key bar/nightclub where you could really let your hair down! When the course first started I met with the rest of the guys: Barbara Broder from Switzerland, Dan Keinan from Isreal, Emmeline de Mooij from Holland, my fellow ITS contestants Saana Wang from Finland and Quentin Shih from China, and the other Brit, the legendary Matthew-Robert Hughes. We all quickly became a tight unit of friends and started a Friday night dinner club where we would each take turns cooking our different national delicacy. My cottage pie went down much better than when I turned to introduce them to baked beans on toast surprisingly… I blame the American baked beans!
The way the course was structured meant we could take full advantage of any of the world-renowned instructors’ courses, as well as the state of the art facilities that the school offers. My personal favourites were the “Advanced Photoshop” class with Kylie Wright and “Photography in the Cinema” class with Tim Maul. In addition to this, our course leader Marc Joseph Berg would take us on outing either to meet up with artists or to go to exhibitions. My two favorite experiences were when I got to meet with one of my long time heroes, photographer Barbara Ess, (I had asked Mark Berg if we could meet her) and when we went up state to Beacon on a little trip to the Dia Art Foundation, one of my favorite galleries in the world, with work by artist Joseph Beuys. Whilst working on my personal project I started to experiment with video, still working within self-portraiture. I became fascinated with the Statue of Liberty as a national icon and as a figure of femininity. I wanted to make her a real person with feelings and issues. To get in to character I did an eight-hour performance piece in Battery Park, to see what it would be like to do her job. Then for the video piece I focused on what the Statue of Liberty would do waking up on her day off, and how she would like to spend it. If you would like to view the video here’s a link to it.
One of my favorite memories of the whole year was when we had our opening party for our exhibition New Releases 2010 in Dumbo, Brooklyn. [Editor’s Note: Dumbo is an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, a neighborhood in the borough of Brooklyn, New York]. The rest of the PhotoGlobal residency and I had spent many months organising this end of the year show. To finally see it come together and to have all the friends, teachers and supporters from SVA come and have a good time all together was great fun, a really good ending to a brilliant year.
After completing the course me and my American friend Jackie went on a road trip across the country, following route 66 and back again. Starting in New York we drove to Detroit, Chicago, St Louis, we went camping in national parks of New Mexico, went to the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, then up to San Francisco, the Yosemite National Park, Salt Lake City, Colorado Springs, Wichita, Memphis, Nashville, Smokey Mountains, Rayleigh in North Carolina, Washington DC and then finally back home to New York. It was a really eye opening experience about the diversity of the American landscape. New York really is almost a different country to the rest of America.
Now back home. In England I lasted less then a month back in my family home in Gloucestershire… It was a very weird experience going straight from the hustle and bustle of New York to the tranquility of village life. Definitely not an experience I wanted to last a long time, so a friend and I decided to become property guardians up in London, which meant becoming live in security for a vacant property at a fraction of the normal London rent prices. At the moment I’m looking to continue expanding my educational career portfolio, along side continuing my professional practice and I’m looking to assist an artist to increase my knowledge of the professional art world.
…Well Clare, let us tell you that you already have a damn good knowledge of the professional practice…
